New Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai is "one of the most despised appointees" of President Donald Trump over the chairman's position on net neutrality, Ginni Thomas writes for The Daily Caller.
After an interview with Pai, Thomas writes that the FCC head "has been under intense incendiary attacks and even physical threat by the left and its mob followers. He has been threatened, his home surrounded by militant protesters, with his family and neighbors shaken."
Despite being appointed to the FCC by former President Barack Obama, despite "90 percent of my career in public service," Pai has been a lightning rod for criticism from liberals, "made up of mostly public interest groups and some liberal academics" who pine for "a heavily regulated, utility-like industry at minimum and ideally a government-owned system made up of municipal networks," ITIF writes.
Pai advocates for a "market-side approach to net neutrality," and it drives liberals crazy.
"The light-touch framework we had for about 20 years, prior to 2015, did a pretty good job," Pai told Thomas. "The American people benefited from all this innovation."
Pai broke down two myths that pervade the left's criticism:
The first myth is there is "something wrong with the Internet that justifies government intervention," Pai told Thomas.
"Prior to 2015, the Internet wasn't broken. There wasn't some market failure that warranted an unelected body of three commissioners to impose these regulations on the internet," Pai said. "We should have evidence of a market-wide problem before we preemptively regulate every single company in the space as if it were Ma Bell back in the 1930s."
The second myth is that the "the FCC is a pawn for corporate interests. To me, that's somewhat amusing since I spent over 90 percent of my career in public service."
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